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Source: Demographics 91

one hand and the tidal wave of young adults in the Third World on the
other hand. Whatever the reasons, twentieth-century societies, both devel-
oped and developing ones, have become prone to extremely rapid and rad-
ical demographic changes, which occur without advance warning.
The most prominent American population experts called together
by Franklin D. Roosevelt predicted unanimously in 1938 that the U.S.
population would peak at around 140 million people in 1943 or 1944,
and then slowly decline. The American population—with a minimum
of immigration—now stands at 240 million. For in 1949, without the
slightest advance warning, the United States kicked off a “baby
boom” that for twelve years produced unprecedentedly large families,
only to turn just as suddenly in 1960 into a “baby bust,” producing
equally unprecedented small families. The demographers of 1938
were not incompetents or fools; there was just no indication then of a
“baby boom.”
Twenty years later another American President, John F. Kennedy,
called together a group of eminent experts to work out his Latin-
Amen-can aid and development program, the “Alliance for Progress.”
Not one of the experts paid attention in 1961 to the precipitous drop
in infant mortality which, within another fifteen years, totally
changed Latin America’s society and economy. The experts also all
assumed, without reservation, a rural Latin America. They, too, were
neither incompetents nor fools. But the drop in infant mortality in
Latin America and the urbanization of society had barely begun at the
time.
In 1972 and 1973, the most experienced labor force analysts in the
United States still accepted without question that the participation of
women would continue to decline as it had done for many years.
When the “baby boomers” came on the labor market in record num-
bers, they worried (quite unnecessarily, as it turned out) where all the
jobs for the young males would be coming from. No one asked where
jobs would come from for young females—they were not supposed
to need any. Ten years later the labor force participation of American
women under fifty stood at 64 per cent, the highest rate ever. And
there is little difference in labor force participation in this group
between married and unmarried women, or between women with and
without children.
These shifts are not only dazzlingly sudden. They are often mys-
terious and defy explanation. The drop in infant mortality in the Third
World can be explained in retrospect. It was caused by a convergence